CHAPTER I.

HISTORICAL TRADITIONS OF THE INDIANS.

The Lenni Lenape (according to the traditions handed down to them by their ancestors) resided many hundred years ago, in a very distant country in the western part of the American continent. For some reason, which I do not find accounted for, they determined on migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set out together in a body. After a very long journey, and many nights’ encampments[28] by the way, they at length arrived on the _Namæsi Sipu_,[29] where they fell in with the Mengwe,[30] who had likewise emigrated from a distant country, and had struck upon this river somewhat higher up. Their object was the same with that of the Delawares; they were proceeding on to the eastward, until they should find a country that pleased them. The spies which the Lenape had sent forward for the purpose of reconnoitring, had long before their arrival discovered that the country east of the Mississippi was inhabited by a very powerful nation, who had many large towns built on the great rivers flowing through their land. Those people (as I was told) called themselves _Talligeu_ or _Talligewi_. Colonel John Gibson,[31] however, a gentleman who has a thorough knowledge of the Indians, and speaks several of their languages, is of opinion that they were not called _Talligewi_, but _Alligewi_, and it would seem that he is right, from the traces of their name which still remain in the country, the Allegheny river and mountains having indubitably been named after them. The Delawares still call the former _Alligéwi Sipu_, the River of the Alligewi. We have adopted, I know not for what reason, its Iroquois name, Ohio, which the French had literally translated into _La Belle Riviere_, The Beautiful River.[32] A branch of it, however, still retains the ancient name Allegheny.

Many wonderful things are told of this famous people. They are said to have been remarkably tall and stout, and there is a tradition that there were giants among them, people of a much larger size than the tallest of the Lenape. It is related that they had built to themselves regular fortifications or entrenchments, from whence they would sally out, but were generally repulsed. I have seen many of the fortifications said to have been built by them, two of which, in particular, were remarkable. One of them was near the mouth of the river Huron, which empties itself into the Lake St. Clair, on the north side of that lake, at the distance of about 20 miles N. E. of Detroit. This spot of ground was, in the year 1786, owned and occupied by a Mr. Tucker. The other works, properly entrenchments, being walls or banks of earth regularly thrown up, with a deep ditch on the outside, were on the Huron river, east of the Sandusky, about six or eight miles from Lake Erie. Outside of the gateways of each of these two entrenchments, which lay within a mile of each other, were a number of large flat mounds, in which, the Indian pilot said, were buried hundreds of the slain Talligewi, whom I shall hereafter with Colonel Gibson call _Alligewi_. Of these entrenchments, Mr. Abraham Steiner, who was with me at the time when I saw them, gave a very accurate description, which was published at Philadelphia, in 1789 or 1790, in some periodical work the name of which I cannot at present remember.[33]

When the Lenape arrived on the banks of the Mississippi, they sent a message to the Alligewi to request permission to settle themselves in their neighbourhood. This was refused them, but they obtained leave to pass through the country and seek a settlement farther to the eastward. They accordingly began to cross the Namæsi Sipu, when the Alligewi, seeing that their numbers were so very great, and in fact they consisted of many thousands, made a furious attack on those who had crossed, threatening them all with destruction, if they dared to persist in coming over to their side of the river. Fired at the treachery of these people, and the great loss of men they had sustained, and besides, not being prepared for a conflict, the Lenape consulted on what was to be done; whether to retreat in the best manner they could, or try their strength, and let the enemy see that they were not cowards, but men, and too high-minded to suffer themselves to be driven off before they had made a trial of their strength, and were convinced that the enemy was too powerful for them. The Mengwe, who had hitherto been satisfied with being spectators from a distance, offered to join them, on condition that, after conquering the country, they should be entitled to share it with them; their proposal was accepted, and the resolution was taken by the two nations, to conquer or die.

Having thus united their forces, the Lenape and Mengwe declared war against the Alligewi, and great battles were fought, in which many warriors fell on both sides. The enemy fortified their large towns and erected fortifications, especially on large rivers, and near lakes, where they were successively attacked and sometimes stormed by the allies. An engagement took place in which hundreds fell, who were afterwards buried in holes or laid together in heaps and covered over with earth. No quarter was given, so that the Alligewi, at last, finding that their destruction was inevitable if they persisted in their obstinacy, abandoned the country to the conquerors, and fled down the Mississippi river, from whence they never returned. The war which was carried on with this nation, lasted many years, during which the Lenape lost a great number of their warriors, while the Mengwe would always hang back in the rear, leaving them to face the enemy. In the end, the conquerors divided the country between themselves; the Mengwe made choice of the lands in the vicinity of the great lakes, and on their tributary streams, and the Lenape took possession of the country to the south. For a long period of time, some say many hundred years, the two nations resided peaceably in this country, and increased very fast; some of their most enterprising huntsmen and warriors crossed the great swamps,[34] and falling on streams running to the eastward, followed them down to the great Bay River,[35] thence into the Bay itself, which we call Chesapeak. As they pursued their travels, partly by land and partly by water, sometimes near and at other times on the great Saltwater Lake, as they call the Sea, they discovered the great River, which we call the Delaware; and thence exploring still eastward, the _Scheyichbi_ country, now named New Jersey, they arrived at another great stream, that which we call the Hudson or North River. Satisfied with what they had seen, they, (or some of them) after a long absence, returned to their nation and reported the discoveries they had made; they described the country they had discovered, as abounding in game and various kinds of fruits; and the rivers and bays, with fish, tortoises, &c., together with abundance of water-fowl, and no enemy to be dreaded. They considered the event as a fortunate one for them, and concluding this to be the country destined for them by the Great Spirit, they began to emigrate thither, as yet but in small bodies, so as not to be straitened for want of provisions by the way, some even laying by for a whole year; at last they settled on the four great rivers (which we call Delaware, Hudson, Susquehannah, and Potomack) making the Delaware, to which they gave the name of “_Lenapewihittuck_,”[36] (the river or stream of the Lenape) the centre of their possessions.

They say, however, that the whole of their nation did not reach this country; that many remained behind in order to aid and assist that great body of their people, which had not crossed the Namæsi Sipu, but had retreated into the interior of the country on the other side, on being informed of the reception which those who had crossed had met with, and probably thinking that they had all been killed by the enemy.

Their nation finally became divided into three separate bodies; the larger body, which they suppose to have been one half of the whole, was settled on the Atlantic, and the other half was again divided into two parts, one of which, the strongest as they suppose, remained beyond the Mississippi, and the remainder where they left them, on this side of that river.

Those of the Delawares who fixed their abode on the shores of the Atlantic divided themselves into three tribes. Two of them, distinguished by the names of the _Turtle_ and the _Turkey_, the former calling themselves _Unâmis_ and the other _Unalâchtgo_, chose those grounds to settle on, which lay nearest to the sea, between the coast and the high mountains. As they multiplied, their settlements extended from the _Mohicannittuck_ (river of the Mohicans, which we call the North or Hudson river) to beyond the Potomack. Many families with their connexions choosing to live by themselves, were scattered not only on the larger, but also on the small streams throughout the country, having towns and villages, where they lived together in separate bodies, in each of which a chief resided; those chiefs, however, were subordinate (by their own free will, the only kind of subordination which the Indians know) to the head chiefs or great council of the nation, whom they officially informed of all events or occurrences affecting the general interest which came to their knowledge. The third tribe, the _Wolf_, commonly called the _Minsi_, which we have corrupted into _Monseys_, had chosen to live back of the two other tribes, and formed a kind of bulwark for their protection, watching the motions of the Mengwe, and being at hand to afford their aid in case of a rupture with them. The Minsi were considered the most warlike and active branch of the Lenape. They extended their settlements, from the _Minisink_, a place named after them, where they had their council seat and fire, quite up to the Hudson on the east; and to the west or south west far beyond the Susquehannah: their northern boundaries were supposed originally to be the heads of the great rivers Susquehannah and Delaware, and their southern boundaries that ridge of hills known in New Jersey by the name of _Muskanecun_, and in Pennsylvania, by those of _Lehigh_, _Coghnewago_, &c. Within this boundary were their principal settlements; and even as late as the year 1742, they had a town, with a large peach orchard, on the tract of land where _Nazareth_, in Pennsylvania, has since been built;[37] another on _Lehigh_ (the west branch of the Delaware), and others beyond the blue ridge, besides small family settlements here and there scattered.

From the above _three_ tribes, the _Unâmis_, _Unalâchtgo_, and the _Minsi_, comprising together the body of those people we call _Delawares_, had in the course of time, sprung many others, who, having for their own conveniency, chosen distant spots to settle on, and increasing in numbers, gave themselves names or received them from others. Those names, generally given after some simple natural objects, or after something striking or extraordinary, they continued to bear even after they ceased to be applicable, when they removed to other places, where the object after which they were named was not to be found; thus they formed separate and distinct tribes, yet did not deny their origin, but retained their affection for the parent tribe, of which they were even proud to be called the grandchildren.

This was the case with the _Mahicanni_ or Mohicans, in the east, a people who by intermarriages had become a detached body, mixing two languages together, and forming out of the two a dialect of their own: choosing to live by themselves, they had crossed the Hudson River, naming it Mahicannituck River after their assumed name, and spread themselves over all that country which now composes the eastern states. New tribes again sprung from them who assumed distinct names; still however not breaking off from the parent stock, but acknowledging the Lenni Lenape to be their grandfather: the Delawares, at last, thought proper to enlarge their council house for their Mahicanni grandchildren, that they might come to their fire, that is to say, be benefited by their advice, and also in order to keep alive their family connexions and remain in league with each other.

Much the same thing happened with a body of the Lenape, called _Nanticokes_, who had, together with their offspring, proceeded far to the south, in Maryland and Virginia; the council house was by their grandfather (the Delawares), extended to the Potomack, in the same manner and for the same motives as had been done with the _Mahicanni_.

Meanwhile the Mengwe, who had first settled on the great Lakes between them, had always kept a number of canoes in readiness to save themselves, in case the Alligewi should return, and their number also increasing, they had in time proceeded farther, and settled below the Lakes along the River St. Lawrence, so that they were now become, on the north side, neighbours of the Lenape tribes.

These Mengwe now began to look upon their southern neighbours with a jealous eye, became afraid of their growing power, and of being dispossessed by them of the lands they occupied. To meet this evil in time, they first sought to raise quarrels and disturbances, which in the end might lead to wars between distant tribes and the Lenape, for which purpose, they clandestinely murdered people on one or the other side, seeking to induce the injured party to believe, that some particular nation or tribe had been the aggressor; and having actually succeeded to their wishes, they now stole into the country of the Lenape and their associates, frequently surprising them at their hunting camps, occasionally committing murders, and making off with the plunder. Foreseeing, however, that they could not go on in this way without being detected, they had recourse to other artful means, by which they actually succeeded in setting tribe against tribe, and nation against nation. As each nation or tribe has a particular mark on their war clubs, different from that of the others; and as on seeing one of these near the dead body of a murdered person, it is immediately known what nation or tribe has been the aggressor; so the Mengwe having left a war club, such as the Lenape made use of, in the Cherokee country, where they had purposely committed a murder, of course the Cherokees naturally concluding that it had been committed by the Lenape, fell suddenly upon them, which produced a most bloody war between the two nations. The treachery of the Mengwe, however, having been at length discovered, the Lenape determined on taking an exemplary revenge, and, indeed, nothing short of a total extirpation[38] of that deceitful race was resolved on; they were, besides, known to eat human flesh,[39] to kill men for the purpose of devouring them; and therefore were not considered by the Lenape as a pure race, or as rational beings; but as a mixture of the human and brutal kinds.

War being now openly declared against the Mengwe, it was carried on with vigour; until, at last, finding that they were no match for so powerful an enemy as the Lenape, who had such a train of connexions, ready to join them if necessity required, they fell upon the plan of entering into a confederacy with each other, by which they would be bound to make a common cause, and meet the common enemy with their united force, and not, as the present prospect was, be destroyed by tribes, which threatened in the end the destruction of the whole. Until this time, each tribe of the Mengwe had acted independent of the others, and they were not inclined to come under any supreme authority, which might counteract their base designs; for now, a single tribe, or even individuals of a tribe, by the commission of wanton hostilities, would draw the more peaceable among them into wars and bloodshed, as particularly had been the case with the Senecas, who were the most restless of the whole; and though the Lenape had directed their force principally against the aggressors, yet the body of the nation became thereby weaker; so that they saw the necessity of coming under some better regulations and government.[40]

This confederation took place some time between the 15th and 16th century;[41] the most bloody wars were afterwards carried on for a great length of time, between the confederated Iroquois, and the Delawares and their connexions, in which the Lenape say that they generally came off victorious. While these wars were carrying on with vigour, the French landed in Canada, and it was not long before they and the now combined Five Nations, or tribes, were at war with each other, the latter not being willing to permit that the French should establish themselves in that country. At last the Iroquois, finding themselves between two fires, and without any prospect of conquering the Lenape by arms, and seeing the necessity of withdrawing with their families, from the shores of the St. Lawrence, to the interior of the country, where the French could not easily reach them, fell upon a stratagem, which they flattered themselves would, if successful, secure to them not only a peace with the Lenape, but also with all the other tribes connected with them; so that they would then have but one enemy (the French) to contend with.

This plan was very deeply laid, and was calculated to deprive the Lenape and their allies, not only of their power but of their military fame, which had exalted them above all the other Indian nations. They were to be persuaded to abstain from the use of arms, and assume the station of mediators and umpires among their warlike neighbours. In the language of the Indians, they were to be made _women_.[42] It must be understood that among these nations wars are never brought to an end but by the interference of the weaker sex. The men, however tired of fighting, are afraid of being considered as cowards if they should intimate a desire for peace. It is not becoming, say they, for a warrior, with the bloody weapon in his hand, to hold pacific language to his enemy. He must shew to the end a determined courage, and appear as ready and willing to fight as at the beginning of the contest. Neither, say they, is it proper, to threaten and to sue in the same breath, to hold the peace belt in one hand, and the tomahawk in the other; men’s words, as well as their actions, should be of a piece, all good or all bad; for it is a fixed maxim of theirs, which they apply on all occasions, that good can never dwell with evil. They also think that a treaty produced by threats or by force, cannot be binding. With these dispositions, war would never have ceased among Indians, until the extermination of one or the other party, if the tender and compassionate sex had not come forward, and by their moving speeches persuaded the enraged combatants to bury their hatchets, and make peace with each other. On these occasions they were very eloquent, they would lament with great feeling the losses suffered on both sides, when there was not a warrior, perhaps, who had not lost a son, a brother, or a friend. They would describe the sorrows of widowed wives, and, above all, of bereaved mothers. The pains of child-birth, the anxieties attending the progress of their sons from infancy to manhood, they had willingly and even cheerfully suffered; but after all these trials, how cruel was it for them to see those promising youths whom they had reared with so much care, fall victims to the rage of war, and a prey to a relentless enemy; to see them slaughtered on the field of battle, or put to death, as prisoners, by a protracted torture, in the midst of the most exquisite torments. The thought of such scenes made them curse their own existence, and shudder at the idea of bearing children. Then they would conjure the warriors by every thing that was dear to them, to take pity on the sufferings of their wives and helpless infants, to turn their faces once more towards their homes, families, and friends, to forgive the wrongs suffered from each other, to lay aside their deadly weapons, and smoke together the pipe of amity and peace. They had given on both sides sufficient proofs of their courage; the contending nations were alike high-minded and brave, and they must now embrace as friends those whom they had learned to respect as enemies. Speeches like these seldom failed of their intended effect, and the women by this honorable function of peace-makers, were placed in a situation by no means undignified. It would not be a disgrace, therefore; on the contrary, it would be an honour to a powerful nation, who could not be suspected of wanting either strength or courage, to assume that station by which they would be the means, and the only means, of preserving the general peace and saving the Indian race from utter extirpation.

Such were the arguments which the artful Mengwe urged to the Lenape to make them fall into the snare which they had prepared for them. They had reflected, they said, deeply reflected on their critical situation; there remained no resource for them, but that some magnanimous nation should assume the part and situation of the _woman_. It could not be given to a weak or contemptible tribe, such would not be listened to; but the Lenape and their allies would at once possess influence and command respect. As men they had been dreaded; as women they would be respected and honored, none would be so daring or so base as to attack or insult them; as women they would have a right to interfere in all the quarrels of other nations, and to stop or prevent the effusion of Indian blood. They entreated them, therefore, to become _the woman_ in name and, in fact, to lay down their arms and all the insignia of warriors, to devote themselves to agriculture and other pacific employments, and thus become the means of preserving peace and harmony among the nations.

The Lenape, unfortunately for themselves, listened to the voice of their enemies. They knew it was too true, that the Indian nations, excited by their own unbridled passions, and not a little by their European neighbours, were in the way of total extirpation by each other’s hands. They believed that the Mengwe were sincere, and that their proposal had no object in view but the preservation of the Indian race. In a luckless hour they gave their consent, and agreed to become _women_. This consent was received with great joy. A feast was prepared for the purpose of confirming and proclaiming the new order of things. With appropriate ceremonies, of which Loskiel has given a particular description,[43] the Delawares were installed in their new functions, eloquent speeches were delivered, accompanied, as usual, with belts of wampum. The great peace belt and the chain of friendship (in the figurative language of the Indians) was laid across the shoulders of the new mediator, one end of which, it was said, was to be taken hold of by all the Indian nations, and the other by the Europeans.[44] The Lenape say that the Dutch were present at that ceremony, and had no inconsiderable share in the intrigue.[45]

The old and intelligent Mahicanni, whose forefathers inhabited the country on the east side of the North river, gave many years since the following account of the above transaction. They said that their grandfather (the Lenni Lenape), and the nations or tribes connected with them, were so united, that whatsoever nation attacked the one, it was the same as attacking the whole; all in such cases would unite and make a common cause. That the long house (council house) of all those who were of the same blood, and united under this kind of tacit alliance, reached from the head of the tide, at some distance above where Gaaschtinick (Albany) now stands, to the head of the tide water on the Potomack. That at each end of this house there was a door for the tribes to enter at. That the Mengwe were in no way connected with those who had access to this house; but were looked upon as strangers. That the Lenape, with the Mohicans and all the other tribes in their connexion, were on the point of extirpating the Five Nations, when they applied to the _Dutchemaan_, who were now making a settlement at or near Gaaschtinick, to assist them in bringing about a peace with the Lenape. That accordingly these new comers invited the Lenape and Mohicans to a grand council, at a place situated at some distance from where Albany now stands, which the white people have since called by the name of _Nordman’s Kill_. That when at length, by their united supplications and fair speeches, they had got the hatchet out of the hands of the Lenape, they buried that weapon at Gaaschtinick, and said that they would build a church over the spot, so that the weapon could never any more be got at, otherwise than by lifting up the whole church, and whatever nation should dare to do this, on them the Dutchemaan would take revenge. That now, having succeeded in getting the weapon out of the hands of the Lenape, the ceremony of placing them in the situation of “the woman,” for the purpose of being mediators, took place, when the Mengwe declared them henceforth to be their cousins, and the Mahicanni, they said, they would call their nephews.

The Mahicanni further say, that it was fear which induced the Dutchemaan to aid the Five Nations in bringing about this peace, because at the place where they were at that time making their settlement, great bodies of warriors would pass and repass, so that they could not avoid being interrupted in their undertakings, and probably molested, if not destroyed, by one or the other of the war parties, as their wars, at that time, were carried on with great rage, and no quarter was given. That in producing this peace, the white people had effected for the Mengwe, what no other nation could have done, and had laid the foundation of the future greatness of their Iroquois friends, as the same policy was pursued by the English, after they came into possession of this country.--So far the tradition of the Mahicanni.

The Rev. Mr. Pyrlæus, in his notes, after fixing as near as he could the time when the Five Nations confederated with each other, proceeds in these words: “According to my informant, Sganarady, a creditable aged Indian, his grandfather had been one of the deputies sent for the purpose of entering into a covenant with the white Europeans; they met at a place since called Nordman’s Kill, about four miles below where afterwards Albany was built, where this covenant of friendship was first established, and the Mohawks were the active body in effecting this work.”

From these three separate accounts of the Lenape, of the Mahicanni, and of the Mohawks, as related by Mr. Pyrlæus, it appears to be conclusively proved, that the Europeans were already in this country, when the Lenape were persuaded to assume the station of _the woman_, and that the Dutch were assisting in the plot, and were at least the instigators, if not the authors of it. It was the _Dutch_ who summoned the great council near Albany; the tomahawk was buried deep in the ground, and the vengeance of the _Dutch_ was threatened if it should ever be taken up again; the peace belt was laid across the shoulders of the unfortunate Delawares, supported at one end by the Five Nations, and at the other by the _Europeans_; all these circumstances point so clearly to European intrigue, that it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the whites adopted this means to neutralize the power of the Delawares and their friends, whom they dreaded, and strengthen the hands of the Iroquois, who were in their alliance.

The Iroquois have denied that these machinations ever took place, and say that they conquered the Delawares in fair battle, and compelled them by force to become women, or in other words that they obliged them to submit to the greatest humiliation to which a warlike spirited people can ever be reduced; not a momentary humiliation, as when the Romans were compelled by the Samnites to pass under the Caudine forks, but a permanent disgrace, which was to last as long as their national existence. If this were true, the Lenape and their allies, who, like all other Indian nations, never considered a treaty binding when entered into under any kind of compulsion, would not have submitted to this any longer than until they could again have rallied their forces and fallen upon their enemy; they would have done long before the year 1755, what they did at last at that time, joined the French in their wars against the Iroquois and English, and would not have patiently waited more than a century before they took their revenge for so flagrant an outrage. Their numbers, acknowledged to have been far superior to that of their Indian enemies, and the vast extent of territory which they possessed, furnished them with ample means to have acted hostilely, if they had thought proper. On the contrary, they lived at peace with the Iroquois, and their European allies, until that decisive war, by which the French lost at once all their extensive possessions on the continent of America.

In addition to these positive proofs, negative evidence of the strongest kind may be adduced. The Iroquois say, indeed, that they conquered the Delawares and their allies, and compelled them to become women. But there is no tradition among them of the particulars of this important event. Neither Mr. Pyrlæus, nor Mr. Zeisberger,[46] who both lived long among the Five Nations, and spoke and understood their language well, could obtain from them any details relative to this supposed conquest; they ought, certainly, to have been able to say how it was effected; whether by one decisive fight or by successive engagements, or at least, when the last battle took place; who were the nations or tribes engaged in it; who the chiefs or commanders; what numbers fell on each side; and a variety of other facts, by which the truth of their assertion might have been proved: the total absence of such details appears to me to militate against them in the strongest manner, and to corroborate the statement of their adversaries.

The Delawares are of opinion, that this scheme of the Five Nations, however deeply laid, and meant essentially to injure them, would not, however, have operated against them, but on the contrary, have greatly subserved their national interest, if the Europeans had not afterwards come into the country in such great numbers, and multiplied so rapidly as they did. For their neutral position would greatly have favoured their increase, while the numbers of the other Indian nations would have been reduced by the wars in which they were continually engaged. But unfortunately for them, it happened that the Europeans successively invaded the country which they occupied, and now forms what are called the middle states, and as they advanced from the Atlantic into the interior, drove before them the Lenape and their allies, and obtained possession of their lands; while the Iroquois, who happened to be placed in the neighbourhood of Canada, between the French and English, who were frequently at war with each other, had an enemy, it is true, in the French nation, but had strong protectors in the English, who considered them as a check upon their enemies, and, being the most numerous people, were best able to afford them protection; thus they were suffered to increase and become powerful, while the Lenape, having no friend near them, the French being then at too great a distance, were entirely at the mercy of their English neighbours, who, advancing fast on their lands, gradually dispersed them, and other causes concurring, produced at last their almost entire destruction. Among those causes the treacherous conduct of the Five Nations may be considered as the principal one.

Before that strange metamorphosis took place, of a great and powerful nation being transformed into a band of defenceless women, the Iroquois had never been permitted to visit the Lenape, even when they were at peace with each other. Whenever a Mengwe appeared in their country, he was hunted down as a beast of prey, and it was lawful for every one to destroy him. But now, _the woman_ could not, consistently with her new station and her engagements, make use of destructive weapons, and she was bound to abstain from all violence against the human species. Her late enemies, therefore, found no difficulty in travelling, under various pretences, through her country, and those of her allies, and leaving here and there a few of their people to remain among them as long as they pleased, for the purpose, as they said, of keeping up a good understanding, and assisting them in the preservation of the general peace. But while they were amusing the Lenape with flattering language, they were concerting measures to disturb their quiet by involving them in difficulties with the neighbouring nations. I shall relate one among many instances of a similar conduct. They once sent their men into the Cherokee country, who were instructed secretly to kill one of that nation, and to leave a war club near the person murdered, which had been purposely made after the manner and in the shape of those of the Delawares. Now leaving a war club in an Indian country, is considered by those nations as a formal challenge or declaration of war. The Cherokees, deceived by appearances, and believing that their grandfather the Lenape had committed the murder, collected a large party to go into their country and take their revenge. Meanwhile, the Iroquois sent a messenger to the Lenape, to inform them of the approach of an enemy, who, they had learned from their hunters, was coming towards their settlement, and to advise them to send a number of their men immediately to a certain place, where they would be met by a large body of the Five Nations, who would take the lead, march in front, and fight their battles, so that they would have little else to do than to look on and see how well their friends fought for them. The Lenape, being in no wise prepared to meet a powerful foe, assembled in haste a few of their men, and repaired to the place of rendezvous, where they were disappointed by not meeting any of their pretended protectors. The enemy, however, was close upon them; the Lenape fought with great courage, but were overpowered by an immense superiority of numbers, and defeated with considerable loss. Now the Iroquois made their appearance, and instead of attacking or pursuing the Cherokees, loaded the Delawares with reproaches, for their temerity, as they called it, in having dared, being _women_, to take the lead in attacking _men_. They told them that the Five Nations being their superiors, they ought to have waited for them before they attacked the Cherokees, that then their protectors would have fought and defeated them, but that as they had thought proper to act by themselves, they had received the punishment justly due to their presumption.

It was thus that the Five Nations rewarded the confidence that the Delawares had placed in them. Their treachery was not, however, suspected for a long time; but it was at last discovered; it was even found out that in this last engagement, a number of the Iroquois had joined in fight against them with their enemies. The Lenape then determined to unite their forces, and by one great effort to destroy entirely that perfidious nation. This, they say, they might easily have done, as they were then yet as numerous as the grasshoppers at particular seasons, and as destructive to their enemies as these insects are to the fruits of the earth; while they described the Mengwe as a number of croaking frogs in a pond, which make a great noise when all is quiet, but at the first approach of danger, nay, at the very rustling of a leaf, immediately plunge into the water and are silent.

But their attention was now diverted by other scenes. The whites were again landing in great numbers on their coast, in the east and south, and this spectacle once more engaged all the capacity of their minds. They were lost in admiration at what they saw, and were consulting and deliberating together on what they should do. The Five Nations, who lived out of the reach of all danger, nevertheless also came; but bent on their own interest, while they were instigating the other nations to fall upon the new comers, or drive them off from their shores, by which they caused useless hostilities, in which they did not appear to participate, they were insinuating themselves into the favour of the powerful strangers, professing great friendship for them, persuading them that they were superior to the other Indian nations, that they had controul over them all, and would chastise those who should disturb their peace.

William Penn came, with his train of pacific followers. Never will the Delawares forget their elder brother _Miquon_, as they affectionately and respectfully call him. From his first arrival in their country, a friendship was formed between them which was to last as long as the sun should shine, and the rivers flow with water. That friendship would undoubtedly have continued to the end of time, had their good brother always remained among them, but in his absence, mischievous people, say they, got into power, who, not content with the land which had been given to them, contrived to get all that they wanted; and when the Lenape looked round for the friends of their brother Miquon, to hear their just complaints, and redress their wrongs, they could not discover them, and had the misfortune to see their greatest enemies, the Mengwe, brought on for the purpose of shutting their mouths, and compelling them to submit to the injustice done them.

They cannot conceive how the English could turn from the people by whom they had been so kindly received and welcomed with open arms; from those who had permitted them to sit down upon their lands in peace, and without fear of being molested by them; who had taken delight in supplying all their wants,[47] and who were happy in smoking the pipe of friendship with them at one and the same fire; how they could not only see them degraded and injured by a base and perfidious nation, but join with that nation in sinking them still lower. For to the countenance of the English, they say, is entirely owing the great preponderance which the Iroquois at last attained: they complain that the English did support that enemy against them, that they even sanctioned their insolence, by telling them to make use of their authority as men, and bring these women (the Lenape) to their senses. That they were even insulted and treated in a degrading manner, in treaties to which the English were parties, and particularly in that which took place at Easton,[48] in Pennsylvania, in July, 1742,[49] when the Six Nations were publicly called on to compel the Delawares to give up the land taken from them by the long day’s walk. But for these repeated outrages, they would not have taken part with the French in the memorable war of 1755.[50] Nor, perhaps, would they have done so, had not they been seduced into the measure by the perfidious Iroquois. At the commencement of that war, they brought the war belt, with a piece of tobacco, to the Delawares, and told them: “Remember that the English have unjustly deprived you of much of your land, which they took from you by force. Your cause is just; therefore smoke of this tobacco, and arise; join with us our fathers, the French, and take your revenge. You are women, it is true, but we will shorten your petticoats, and though you may appear by your dress to be women, yet by your conduct and language you will convince your enemies that you are determined not tamely to suffer the wrongs and injuries inflicted upon you.”

Yielding to these solicitations, the Delawares and their connexions took up arms against the English in favor of the French, and committed many hostilities, in which the Iroquois appeared to take no part. Sir William Johnson requested them to use their ascendancy and to persuade the hostile Indians to lay down the hatchet, instead of which, instead of conforming to the ancient custom of Indian nations, which was simply to take the war-hatchet back from those to whom they had given it, they fell on a sudden on the unsuspecting Lenape, killed their cattle, and destroyed their town on the Susquehannah, and having taken a number of them prisoners, carried them to Sir William Johnson, who confined and put them in irons. This cruel act of treachery, the Delawares say, they will never forget nor forgive.

Thus the Lenape, whose principal settlements were then on the frontier of Pennsylvania, took part with the French, and acted hostilely against the English during the whole of the war of 1755. The animosity which mutual hostilities produced between them and the settlers concurred, no doubt, with other causes, in producing the murder of the Conestogo Indians, which took place at the close of that war, in December, 1763, and is feelingly related by Loskiel, part I., ch. 14 and 15.[51]

The revolutionary war put an end to the exorbitant power of the Iroquois. They were, indeed, still supported by the British government, but the Americans were now the strongest party, and of course against them. They endeavored to persuade the other Indian nations to join them, but their expectations were deceived. At a meeting which took place at Pittsburg in 1775, for the express purpose of deliberating on the part which it became Indians to take in the disturbances which had arisen between the King of Great Britain and his subjects, Capt. White Eyes, a sensible and very spirited warrior of the Lenape,[52] boldly declared to a select body of the Senecas, that his Indians would never join any nation or power, for the purpose of destroying a people who were born on the same soil with them. That the Americans were his friends and brothers, and that no nation should dictate to him what part he should take in the existing war. Anticipating the measure which the American Congress took in the succeeding year, he declared _himself_,[53] in behalf of his nation, free and independent of the Iroquois; they had pretended that they had conquered him, they had made a woman of him and dressed him in woman’s apparel, but now he was again a man, he stood before them as a man, and with the weapons of a man he would assert his claim to all yonder country, pointing to the land on the west side of the Allegheny river; for to him it belonged, and not to the Six Nations, who falsely asserted that they had acquired it by conquest. In the year 1778 or 1779, the Lenape bravely asserted their national independence by joining Col. Brodhead’s troops in an expedition against the Senecas.[54] If they did not do as much in that war as might have been expected of them, and took only a partial revenge, it was owing to the death of their brave chief, White Eyes, who died of the small pox at Pittsburg, I think, in the year 1780. He was a Christian in his heart, but did not live to make a public profession of our religion, though it is well known that he persuaded many Indians to embrace it.[55]

Although the Lenape acted independently in the war of 1755, and made a formal declaration of their independence at the beginning of the revolutionary war, yet the Six Nations persevered in their pretensions, and still affected to consider them as women. Finding, however, that this obsolete claim was no longer acknowledged, and that it was useless to insist upon it any longer, they came forward of their own accord, about the time of Wayne’s treaty, and formally declared that the Lenape and their allies were no longer women, but MEN.

The Delawares and Mohicans agree in saying, that from the time of the fatal treaty in which they were persuaded to assimilate themselves to women, and, indeed, ever since the Europeans first came into the country, the conduct of the Iroquois was treacherous and perfidious in the extreme. That it was their constant practice to sally out secretly and commit depredations on the neighbouring nations, with intent to involve them in wars with each other. That they would also commit murders on the frontier settlers, from Virginia to New England, and charge the tribes who were settled in the neighbourhood with the commission of those crimes. That they would then turn negotiators, and effect a peace, always at the expense of the nation whom they had injured. They would sell the lands of other nations to the English and receive the money, pretending to a paramount right to the whole territory, and this, say the Lenape, was their manner of CONQUERING NATIONS!